Wibblelog

Jenny started a new food blog. There will be much food porn there.

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Jenny has posted her Sweet Potato Casserole recipe.  Enjoy!  This is a completely fantastic thing, as long as you don’t screw up and boil the sweet potatoes like I did the first time I tried to make it.

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Thanksgiving feasts 1 through 3 are now complete.  A friend here decided it would be awesome to throw a pre-thanksgiving celebration party, such that we could get together and cook up a storm without any of the family politics and ritual involved in the more traditional Thanksgiving gatherings that will happen later this week.  It was fantastic, and I think we’ll be making this an annual thing from now on.  For those keeping track at home, the feasts so far have been:

1. The big show last Saturday.  Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pecan pie, sweet potato casserole, gravy (obviously), and dates stuffed with blue cheese wrapped in bacon.  All home-made, of course.  Twelve people.
2. Leftovers the day after, for “breakfast”.  Two people.
3. More leftovers the day after that, in the form of awesome turkey+stuffing+extras meatloaf.  Two people.

… and there’s still a veritable mountain of turkey and stuffing left after all that.  I think we might have cooked too much.  But it’s awesome.

BTW, I moved the previously-posted recipe links around into a wiki-like format, and added some new ones.

• All the recipes I’ve posted (bookmark this, new ones will show up there)
• newly posted: Grandma Jackson’s Pecan Pie (recipe courtesy Jenny’s grandmother. It’s so good that even the cat wants it)
• newly posted: Grandma Jackson’s Pumpkin Pie

I’ll be posting some more recipes soon, starting with that sweet potato casserole that everybody loved so much.  These are all Jenny’s creations of course, so she gets full credit for their success.

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I originally intended this blog to be a food-blog, since I didn’t have much else worth posting. Having nothing interesting to say certainly hasn’t kept me from posting, but I thought it might be nice to start posting some of the recipes that come out of my kitchen at home. Jenny has a veritable treasure trove of recipes in her head, and I’ve started encouraging her to properly document them for posterity. Here are a few.

• Crispy Fried Tofu with Scallions and Ginger Sauce (also known as “#209″ to anyone who frequents Mandarin Wok in Champaign). This is our approximation of a golden favorite from that restaurant.
• Lobster Avocado Salad - this is an original from Jenny. I promise it’s good. If you’re initially freaked out at the thought of lobster and avocado together, I recommend getting over it. It’s great - at least in this recipe.
• Home-made Mayonnaise - This is just a simple mayonnaise recipe, needed as part of the Lobster Avocado Salad. Basically lifted from Julia Child’s book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Enjoy. Hopefully there will be more recipes to come. Let me know how it turns out if you try any of these.

(update: fixed the recipe links. Sorry about that.)

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These are freaking delicious. Even Jenny loved them when we made them, and she normally hates things with apple in them. (She insists that she really does like apples; she’s just extremely picky about things _with_ apple.) I highly recommend this recipe. We added about 1/2 cup more flour than the recpie actually calls for to get the right sort of consistency. Try it - you’ll like it. Just make sure you have a pan you can use on the stove and then put in the oven without the handle melting.

Oh, and since I have to have an opinion on everything, you should use Jonagold apples. Stay the hell away from Golden Delicious. Their name is an evil, evil lie, and when you eat them the terrorists win.

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So, I’ve discovered another wine that I actually like: the 2003 Louis Jadot pinot noir bourgogne.  It’s relatively mass market stuff, so it’s pretty cheap - about $20 a bottle.  (or around $13 if you mail order it, apparently) It’s simple and very drinkable, and I think it goes great with lamb (which is good, because that’s what I bought it for).  I’m presently having a glass of it with some crackers and cheese, and I like it here too.  I don’t claim to know a damn thing about wine, but I’ve at least tried enough things to know what I like and what I don’t, and this one is on my Good List.  I tried their chardonnay as well - I don’t recall what vintage it was, but it’s whatever they had at Safeway last week.  I thought it was decent too, so I’ll have to try it again sometime.

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